My weekends are exhausting! No kidding. My husband went to see my son's team, the Davidson Wildcats, play the College of Charleston Cougars. Someday I will write a lot about the college baseball experience but today I'm in a different place. With my husband out of town, I was left to shuttle the other two offspring around. Saturday was filled with a pitching lesson, gymnastic team practice, a trip to Target and a few hundred loads of laundry.  Sunday included a trip to Virginia Beach for softball team practice (that's a four hour excursion to and fro) and a gymnastic clinic back in Richmond. I managed to squeeze in grocery shopping at Kroger and 5:00 PM Mass, which was truly a miracle.

On Saturday while one took a pitching lesson, those left went to Panera Bread for breakfast. While there, we decided to pick up some cookies for the pitching coach. This woman, Keri Cobb, can settle the nerves of a 16-year way better than I and she does this without eliciting the faintest trace of emotional meltdown, which often accompany my efforts to do the same. If the cookies were gold, they would not be enough.

Anyway, while standing in line my 11 year old asked for a baguette. She is thinking of the small piece of bread that comes with your lunch but you can't buy those. The person taking care of us (these words are chosen carefully) offered a full size baguette, which I don't want near me in a car where I won't be able to resist its strange powers. I tell my daughter no and continue processing the cookie transaction. While I'm digging for my Panera card, my guy hands the transaction off to another equally talented person who completes the transaction and sends us on our way. But as I turn to leave, the first guy is back and what does he have? You guessed it, a small baguette that he presents to the 11 year old who is tickled pink and off we go. He didn't have to do that, we didn't' ask for him to, but it was perfect. I immediately tweeted #Panera Bread - Staples & Parham Rds RVa. You made our day. Thanks Nick! The owner of Panera, if he is paying attention can now thank Nick for the great advertising he got for the cost of a small hunk of bread.

Fast forward to Sunday. We made good time on the return trip from Virginia Beach and softball practice and had 40 minutes to grab a fast lunch before the gymnastics' clinic. After a tension filled discourse, Tropical Smoothie got the nod. We placed our order and waited... and waited. We could hear the teen employees yakking it up in the back about how tired they were. They were involved in quite a bit of one-upmanship despite the fact that no one appeared to be working all that hard. After three separate trips to the rest room, one for each of us, and approximately 15 minutes of elapsed time, my 11 year old actually asked somewhat rhetorically what they were tired from since no one was doing anything. My16 year old noted that this behavior was likely to ruin her hopes for summer employment because she would forever be linked (because of her age) to this type of lackluster work performance. Several people walked out without ordering. Every so often food appeared from the back giving the gathering crowd the encouragement they needed to continue their wait. Surely their glorious smoothies were just seconds from appearing, right?

At the 30-minute mark, I went to get the car since we would have to book it to the gym or be late. My 16 year old finally caught the eye of an employee and inquired about our smoothies. After rousing them, she learned that ours had not been made but that was quickly remedied. I tweeted: #Tropical Smoothie Busy St. RVa - don't bother 2day if you don't have an hour to spend. If that owner is paying attention, it's probably a good idea to stop by next Sunday and see what's going on. 

There's a new book out this week: The Thank You Economy by renowned entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk. The premise of this book can be summed up in these two experiences but here's the streamlined version from the book jacket: "We have entered into an entirely new business era, one in which the companies that see the biggest returns won't be the ones that throw the most money at an advertising campaign, but will be those that prove they care about their customers more than anyone else."  Mr. Vaynerchuk, who is a very colorful guy, goes on to point out that those businesses that can shift their culture to be more customer aware and fan-friendly will pull away from the pack and profit in today's markets.  How do they know they're taking care of their customer better than their competitors? They listen to all that chatter on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Four Square and so on and so on.

To capitalize on all the chatter, businesses need to listen and thank the people doing the positive storytelling so they keep on telling and check with those who weren't so happy and learn what can be done better.  Those folks have done you a great service by letting you know in time to fix it, before all that negative adds up to a going out of business strategy.

So here's my question: When was the last time your organization delivered a customer experience worth writing about?  And when was the last time you responded to something said about your company either positive or negative out there in the blog-o-spere and social media land?

Get to work.